Subscribe

Chinese SMS to top 500bn

By Iwan Pienaar, Group editor, Intelligence Publishing
Johannesburg, 11 Aug 2004

Chinese SMS to top 500bn

Chinese people are expected to send 550 billion text messages this year, doubling mobile phone operator revenues to $6.7 billion, reports AFP.

The country has 100 million users who will double the number of messages they send this year, according to the Ministry of Information. China Mobile is expected to handle 350 billion short messages compared to 170 billion last year.

By 2006, mobile phone users are likely to send 1.4 trillion short messages, equivalent to $17 billion in charges, according to the ministry.

New Mexico police get laptops for cruisers

The city of Rio Rancho has spent $75 000 on laptops that will be mounted in 50 police cruisers initially, reports AP.

"These are going to enable us to do a lot," says John Francis, spokesman for the Rio Rancho Department of Public Safety.

"Our officers will be able to access the National Crime Information Centre from their cars, conduct silent dispatch operations and even print out tickets on the spot."

VGA screens for mobile phones

Samsung Electronics has developed a VGA screen with the same picture quality as notebook screens for mobile phones, according to Newsfactor.com.

The 2.6-inch thin film transistor liquid crystal display screen has a 300-pixels per inch (ppi) image quality.

"This technology will be initially targeted for personal digital assistant phones and other top-end mobile phones that require high image quality," says Kim Hyung Guel, VP of the Mobile Display Business Team at Samsung.

The new screen uses amorphous silicon technology that until recently could only produce resolutions of up to 150ppi.

Share